Excellent piece this, you've managed to pack in a boat-load of advice, some of which I knew, some I didn't know, and some I'd forgotten about. And yeah, shorter novels. Anything in the vicinity of 500 pages, I tend to avoid, as I'm not that interested in the author's detailed magic system or the wider social history of their future-verse. Just give me some good characters and put them through the grinder please.
Funny that you extol reading one's text aloud; it was actually through the KGB reading series that I came to appreciate the value of oral reading in the story development process.
Awesome advice! Your posts always seem to answer questions that are rolling around in my noggin'
Sometimes I don't even know the questions are there, but I DO know that something is 'wrong.' I re-read Nancy Kress' 'Beginnings, Middles, & Endings' over the holidays. I found new answers in there as well. I appreciate 'The Outer Deep' because I almost always find nuggets of knowledge or skills that I use to make my stories less 'clunky.'
Excellent piece this, you've managed to pack in a boat-load of advice, some of which I knew, some I didn't know, and some I'd forgotten about. And yeah, shorter novels. Anything in the vicinity of 500 pages, I tend to avoid, as I'm not that interested in the author's detailed magic system or the wider social history of their future-verse. Just give me some good characters and put them through the grinder please.
Funny that you extol reading one's text aloud; it was actually through the KGB reading series that I came to appreciate the value of oral reading in the story development process.
Awesome advice! Your posts always seem to answer questions that are rolling around in my noggin'
Sometimes I don't even know the questions are there, but I DO know that something is 'wrong.' I re-read Nancy Kress' 'Beginnings, Middles, & Endings' over the holidays. I found new answers in there as well. I appreciate 'The Outer Deep' because I almost always find nuggets of knowledge or skills that I use to make my stories less 'clunky.'
I needed this article. Thank you!